Rockefeller III Births the Population Council
When global population passed 2½ billion in the early 1950s (it is now more than 7 billion), John Rockefeller III was among those convinced that catastrophe was on the way. Read more…
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Philanthropists vs. Communism
During America’s Cold War with the Soviet Union, many philanthropists hoped that the confrontation could be settled peacefully through a competition of ideas rather than with weapons. In the end, Read more…
U.N. Headquarters
When the United Nations was created in 1945, after the trauma of World War II, it lacked a home. The organization initially met in cramped quarters at Manhattan’s Hunter College Read more…
RAND Corporation
There was recognition after World War II that one of the important factors allowing the U.S. to win the war was an unprecedented mobilization of scientific and industrial resources by Read more…
Laying the Intellectual Foundation for Racial Equality
In 1935, the board of the Carnegie Corporation expressed interest in “Negro problems” in the United States, and the extent to which they could be reduced through education. This led Read more…
Building the ACLU
Charles Garland, age 21, told the executor of his father’s estate that he would not accept the inheritance left to him because it came from “a system which starves thousands.” Read more…
Hoover Institution
Fresh from leading humanitarian relief efforts during World War I, future President Herbert Hoover founded the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University in 1919. His goal Read more…
Private Scholarly Institutes to Guide Government
In its early years, Andrew Carnegie’s main foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, had a Republican board that was anxious to improve the quality of American governance without increasing the size of Read more…
Brookings Institution
Robert Brookings made a lot of money in St. Louis manufacturing and selling housewares, then devoted much of his fortune and energy to building up Washington University and other institutions Read more…
Mothers’ Pensions
Early in the twentieth century, concerns about poor children led a rag-tag alliance of progressive politicians, early feminists, and dissident philanthropists to promote what they called mothers’ pensions—direct government aid Read more…
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
“To hasten the abolition of war, the foulest blot upon our civilization.” That was the utopian aim when Andrew Carnegie handed over a $10 million startup grant in 1910 to Read more…
Booker T. Washington’s Secret Litigation Donations
Born into slavery, Booker T. Washington went on to become the best-known African American of his generation, primarily as the leader of the Tuskegee Institute, which prepared thousands of black Read more…
Rockefeller Sends the South to High School
When John Rockefeller put up a million dollars to create the General Education Board, his mission was to improve public education in the Southern states—particularly high schools. In many places Read more…
John Muir Guides the Sierra Club to Activism
A difficult upbringing under a fanatical father turned John Muir into a loner and wanderer who spent long stretches isolated from other people in remote places. Once he had formulated Read more…
Jane Addams Pushes Social Reform
In 1895, with the help of private philanthropy, Jane Addams published Hull House Maps and Papers, a collection of articles calling public attention to the Chicago housing and working conditions Read more…
Adding Active Resistance to Abolitionism
The long, hard campaign to ban slavery was the first, and still largest, triumph of public-policy philanthropy in the U.S. When it began in earnest in the 1830s, private donations Read more…
American Missionary Association
Led by a mix of evangelical pastors and funded by Lewis Tappan and other public-minded philanthropists, the American Missionary Association was created in upstate New York in 1846. It promulgated Read more…
Amistad Decision
In 1839, a group of Africans captured by Spanish slavers and then sold into bondage in Cuba rose against the crew of the ship transporting them. They eventually came to Read more…
American Anti-Slavery Society
The powerful religious and moral revival in America during the early 1800s, known as the Second Great Awakening, spawned an outpouring of voluntary giving and the creation of many new Read more…
California Techies Find Philanthropy (Silicon Valley)
Despite the enormous amount of money sloshing through Silicon Valley, and the high-profile giving of families like the Packards, Hewletts, and Moores, our tech heartland has traditionally been a comparatively Read more…